Al-Jaafari: The meeting of constructional experts is a purely technical issue

2017-05-19 15:25:23

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Head of the Syrian Arab Republic delegation to Geneva Bashar al-Jaafari announced in a briefing on Friday the end of the official meetings within the 6th round of the intra-Syrian dialogue held in the Swiss city with a final session of talks the delegation held with the UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.

Al-Jaafari said the delegation discussed during today’s session the U.S. attack on one of the Syrian Arab Army’s military points on al-Tanf road in the Syrian Badia, which took place Thursday evening.

“At every meeting, we would like to remind the attendees that state terrorism is being practiced against our country,” he added.

He clarified that Astana agreement on the de-escalation zones is about specific areas and not the entire Syrian territory, noting that the mechanisms of implementing the agreement have not been set yet.

He also explained that the meeting of constitutional experts, which was agreed on with de Mistura during yesterday’s session of talks, is a purely technical issue to help find common points, noting that the meeting will be of a partial nature to take place within the framework of the meetings of the delegation.

The a session of talks between the Syrian Arab Republic delegation and the UN Special Envoy for Syria was held earlier today at the headquarters of the United Nations in the Geneva.

Four sessions of talks were held between both sides over the past three days.

In a press conference following yesterday’s session, al-Jaafari said that the intensive consultations heled between the UN Envoy and the Syrian Arab Republic delegation over the past two days resulted in reaching agreement to hold informal meetings between constitutional experts from both sides.

He added that the purpose of these meetings is to discuss the paper of basic principles, which includes in its articles appropriate points that serve as constitutional principles, referring to the basic principles paper which consists of 12 points where the elements related to the constitutional process will be dealt with.

Sharp differences among “opposition” delegation

A source inside the “Riyadh Opposition” delegation to the intra-Syrian dialogue in Geneva revealed that sharp differences emerged inside the delegation due to the continued wrangling and fighting for gains and private interests offered by their operators.

RT website correspondent in Geneva quoted the source as saying that those differences are due to several reasons, mainly the delegation is operated by three figures, while the role of the others is not important.

The source noted that there are other differences over the possibility of combining the delegations of the platforms of Cairo and Moscow to form a unified delegation of the opposition groups, saying this idea was sharply opposed by the delegation’s leaders.

Meanwhile, the so-called “military factions” announced suspending their participation in the main negotiation delegation of the opposition due to the “absence of clearness of decision-making process [inside the delegation]” and “lack of negotiations strategy, as well as the relations between the Higher Negotiations Committee (HNC) and the negotiation delegation, which doesn’t fit their interests.